The magazine printed the top thirty of this chart, and the chart ran to sixty. 1/1/1988 is the last week AOR Tracks appeared on THE BACK PAGE, four charts to a page - Contemporary Hit Radio, AOR Tracks, Adult Contemporary and Urban Contemporary - where there was room for thirty positions. From the 1/8 issue it has a page of its own and all sixty are printed. The chart itself did not change that week, and the next page proves it: 1/8’s LAST WEEK column, which is this week, carries figures up to 60 — No. 51 claims 60, No. 50 claims 58, No. 47 claims 55 — and its second history column, which is 12/18/1987, reaches 60 as well. So what changed on 1/8 is the printed extent and not the ranking. The archive holds the thirty rows the magazine set and does not invent the thirty it did not. Twenty-two records on the 1/8 page name a 1/1 rank this archive cannot show; each of those is recorded as a re-entry, which is honest on both counts — the record did chart the week before, so it is not a debut, and the archive cannot say where, so it does not pretend to. This page also prints no LAST WEEK column at all. Its three history columns are headed Four Weeks , Three Weeks and Two Weeks , because the magazine published no issue on 12/25/1987 - one week missing, not two, so the week two back still exists and is printed. January then walks the headings into place: 1/8 reads Four Weeks, Three Weeks, Last Week; 1/15 reads Four Weeks, Two Weeks, Last Week; and from 1/22 they settle at Three Weeks, Two Weeks, Last Week for the rest of the year. The page is trended in full otherwise — fourteen of its thirty ranks are bulleted — so this is not the no-trending case. The ranks and the bullets are the magazine’s own and were read off the page; only the comparison with the previous week is missing, because the magazine did not print one.
3W / 2W / LW are this song's positions in the three previous published issues of
this chart, which is how the magazine printed them — across a year-end break, last week is the
previous December's final issue, not the previous calendar week. A hyphen means the song was not
on the chart that week, or that this chart had not started yet: Pop CHR and Adult CHR/Hot AC
both begin with the 4/22/1994 issue, so their opening weeks have nothing behind them, and
Country begins with 1/7/1994.
Which charts a week offers depends on the week: the magazine split its CHR reporting in April 1994
and retired the combined CHR/Top 40 chart at the end of that year, so 1995 and 1996 issues
carry Adult Contemporary, Pop CHR and Hot AC but no CHR. The magazine also took a three-week
year-end break four years running — it published no charts between 12/22/1995 and
1/12/1996, 12/20/1996 and 1/10/1997, 12/19/1997 and 1/9/1998, 12/18/1998 and 1/8/1999,
12/17/1999 and 1/7/2000, or 12/22/2000 and 1/12/2001
— so for a record that ran across one of those breaks, last week is the previous
December's final issue, three calendar weeks before. The 1999 charts end at 12/17: the magazine
published no 12/24 issue, and its 12/31 Annual Radio Careers issue carried no charts.
Country joins the archive in 1994 , running 1/7 to 12/16 beside the other four. 1994
is the year the magazine rebuilt everything, and it rebuilt the Country page twice: through 2/25 the
chart is ranked on station ROTATIONS (heavy, medium and light play counts), from 3/4 on its
new points-and-plays system, and from 9/9 under the Country Top 50 banner every later
year of this archive uses. Two weeks of 1994 stand apart. 1/7 heads its history columns
5, 4 and 3 WKS with no last-week column at all, because the magazine published nothing between
12/17/1993 and it — though it is bulleted and trended otherwise. 3/4 is the week
the rebuild reached Country, seven weeks before CHR and eleven before AC: its history and
change columns are blank on every row and nothing is bulleted, and the page says why —
"due to the entirely new music system this week, no bullets were given and no trends can be
shown until next week".
Country then runs 1/6 to 12/22 in 1995, still ranked on total points — the magazine's
reporter-polled page, four and a half years ahead of the Mediabase conversion. Two weeks of 1995
publish a ranking and no comparison at all. 1/6 is Country's ordinary January blank:
every history column dashed, no bullet anywhere. 12/1 is the only week in this archive
where the magazine prints the reason on the page — it raised the minimum reporting market from
a 12+ population of 100,000 to 150,000, 21 stations were affected, and it says "bullets and
last week trend information is eliminated this week due to the panel changes". Its reporter
count drops from 210 to 186 in the same issue. That one was Country's own: the other three
charts of 12/1 are bulleted as usual. The three years after 1995 do something different again
— 1/12/1996 , 1/10/1997 and 1/9/1998 head their four history columns
5W, 4W, 3W and TW with no LW among them, because the first issue of each January carried no
charts and the Country chart before it was three weeks back. Those three are otherwise trended
in full, with 40, 40 and 42 of their 50 ranks bulleted.
Country carries on through 1999, running 1/8 to 12/17. Two of
its weeks publish a ranking and no comparison at all: 1/8 , where the magazine prints no
last-week column on the Country page whatsoever — the four history columns are headed
5W, 4W, 3W and TW, with no LW among them — and 6/25 , the Mediabase conversion,
where the measurement changed underneath the chart and there was nothing comparable to trend
against. Both dash every row and carry no bullet anywhere, and both pages say so when you
open them. The 1/8 case is Country's own habit rather than the issue's — it opens
almost every year in this archive without a week to trend against, 1996, 1997 and 1998 being
the exceptions that trend to a chart three weeks old instead — while the other three
charts of that week trend normally. 1995 is the year that does it twice, in January and
again at the start of December.
The 2000 charts run 1/7 to 12/22, the magazine having skipped the last Friday of that year too. One
week of 2000 is short: the only surviving scan of the 8/4/2000 issue is missing the pages that
carried CHR/Pop and AC, so that date offers Adult CHR / Hot AC alone. The 2001 charts run
1/12 to 12/21, and three Fridays are absent: 1/5 was a year-end issue with no chart in it,
the magazine published nothing in the week of 9/14, and 12/28 is the year-end skip again. The
12/14/2001 week is here but was rebuilt rather than transcribed, its only scan stopping
before the charts; the page says so when you open it.
The 2002 charts run 1/11 to 12/20 and not one week of the year is missing: the magazine published
51 issues and the 1/4 year-end number is the only one without a chart in it. Two things
about 2002 are worth knowing before you read it. Hot AC grew from a Top 30 to a Top 40 on
5/17, a week before its own banner admitted it — that page prints forty records under
a heading still reading Top 30. And on 12/6, 12/13 and 12/20 the AC chart carries no bullet
and no last-week figure at all: 51 of the magazine's AC reporters had gone over to all-holiday
music, taking the panel from 87 stations to 68, and the magazine took the trending out rather
than publish a comparison it thought worthless. Those three pages say so when you open them.
Country runs from 1/7/2000, a Top 50 every week. It was added to the archive at 2002
and later extended back over 2000 and 2001, so those two years carry it alongside charts that
were transcribed years earlier. Three things about the early Country years are worth knowing.
Its page in 2000 and through 7/2001 carries no +/- column at all — total points,
total plays and gross impressions for the week, and nothing about the change — and from
8/17/2001 the magazine drops the points column outright and ranks by plays instead, before going
back to points in 2002. On 9/28/2001 the chart prints its ranking, its figures and its
bullets but no last-week column at all : every row is dashed where the previous position
would go. And two published weeks of 2001 — 8/10 and 12/14 — survive
in no scan and are absent from Country here; they are not rebuilt from the weeks after them,
because the surviving evidence leaves more positions open than it can fill. Each of those
pages says so when you open it.
2002 is where Country was first added, and two things
are worth knowing about it. Its ranking is by POINTS rather than plays, and so is its bullet
— the page's own rule is “bullets appear on songs gaining in points or remaining
flat from previous week” — so a Country record can gain plays and still lose its
bullet. And Breaker , where it appears in the last-week column, is not an entering marker
at all: it is a status the magazine flags when a record crosses its station threshold, printed where
the rank would go, and the record is often already well up the chart. The first Country week of
the year, 1/11, carries no trending and no bullets for want of a comparable week before it; that
page says so when you open it.
The 2003 charts run 1/10 to 12/19, fifty weeks with none missing, and carry all four charts from
the opening week. The magazine redesigned these pages at the 7/11 issue — the GROSS IMPRESSIONS
column became TOTAL AUDIENCE — which changes nothing shown here. Two weeks are worth a word.
On 1/10 the AC and Country charts publish no trending at all: both dash every row and carry
no bullet, AC because it was still in the holiday suspension that began in December 2002 and
resumed, exactly as the magazine promised, on 1/17; Country because it does this every January. Both
pages say so when you open them. And on 12/5 the AC chart carries real last-week figures
and not one bullet on any of its thirty records — not the magazine withholding anything,
but Thanksgiving week, in which no record on the chart gained a play. Records climb it that week
without a bullet, which is the plainest demonstration in the archive that a bullet is not an
upward move.
The 2004 charts run 1/9 to 12/17, fifty weeks with none missing: the magazine published 52 issues,
its 1/2 and 12/31 numbers carry no chart, and there is no 12/24 issue at all. Two things about
2004 are worth knowing. Country's bullet rule widened. Through 2002 its footnote read
“bullets appear on songs gaining in points or remaining flat”; by 2004 it reads
“gaining points and/or plays or remaining flat”. The chart is still ranked on
points, but a record may now be bulleted on plays alone, so Country rows all through this year
carry a bullet beside a falling points figure. Lonestar's “Let's Be Us Again”
at No. 5 on 6/11 is the plainest: bulleted, −113 in the points column and +36 in the plays
column right beside it. And on 1/9 the AC and Country charts publish their ranking but
withhold its movement — real three-week figures on every row that is not entering, then an
em-dash in the change column and no bullet anywhere on either page. That is a different thing
from the December 2002 and January 2003 suspensions, where the magazine published no comparison at
all; here the comparison is printed and only the movement is left unsaid. Both pages say so when
you open them.
The 2005 charts run 1/7 to 12/23 — fifty-one weeks, the longest year here since 2001.
The magazine published 51 issues and every one carries all four charts, including its
opening number; there is no 12/30 issue. Two things are worth knowing. On 1/7 all
four charts publish a full ranking and no comparison at all — every last-week
figure dashed, every change dashed, no bullet anywhere on any of the four pages. The magazine's
own footnote explains it: these pages rank the airplay week of 12/26/04–1/1/05, while
the last chart it published ranked 12/5–12/11, so two airplay weeks went unmeasured in
between and there was no adjacent week to trend against. No other year here opens without
trending on every chart at once. All four pages say so when you open them, and all four
resume normally on 1/14. And through December the AC chart empties out as the magazine's
panel turns over to holiday music — its No. 1 holds about 2,000 plays in the summer,
950 on 12/2 and 510 on 12/9 — but unlike December 2002 the trending was not
suspended, so those are ordinary weeks with small numbers.
The 2006 charts run 1/13 to 12/22 — fifty weeks, and the year opens a week late
because the magazine's 1/6 issue carries no charts at all : thirty-eight pages of
year-ahead columns, with not one ranked page among them. So on 1/13 all four charts
publish a full ranking and no comparison whatsoever — every last-week figure dashed,
every change dashed, no bullet anywhere — for want of a published week behind them.
All four pages say so when you open them.
And on 8/11 the magazine rebuilt the charts from nothing. It left Mediabase for Nielsen
Broadcast Data Systems, redesigned the pages, and changed two of the four charts in the same
issue: CHR/Pop became CHR/Top 40 and was cut from a top 50 to a top 40, and Country
was grown from 50 to 60 . AC and Hot AC kept their thirty and forty. That is why the
Pop chart here loses its last ten places in August and the Country chart gains ten. A record
charting either side of that week is one run here rather than two, but the movement across it
is the magazine's own re-ranking on new data rather than an ordinary week's rise or fall —
the 8/11 pages trend against a Nielsen ranking of the previous week that was never printed,
which is why their last-week figures reach positions the chart before them did not have.
One week is short: the only surviving scan of the 12/1 issue is missing its AC and Hot
AC pages, so those two charts carry forty-nine weeks where Pop and Country carry fifty. The
week is not rebuilt from the one after it — the evidence does not reach — and both
charts say so when you look for it.
The archive now runs unbroken from 1979. Both 1979 and 1980 carry CHR as a top 30 and Adult
Contemporary as a top 40 — 1979 running 1/12 to 12/21 and 1980 1/11 to 12/19 — and
a record that charted across those year ends is one run here rather than several.
Eight of those hundred weeks are missing from the scans and were rebuilt from the history
columns of the issues that follow them: 3/16, 3/23, 4/6 and 4/20 in 1979, and 2/29 and 6/6 in
1980. Three more 1980 Fridays — 1/25, 4/11 and 5/16 — survive as issues whose Back
Page does not, so on those weeks the Adult chart was read off the page as usual and only CHR is
rebuilt. Each of those pages says so when you open it.
At the 6/25/1999 issue the magazine's charts converted to Mediabase monitored airplay; from that
week the bullet marks airplay gained or held flat rather than gained, and the
6/25 issue itself carries no bullets at all, having no comparable week before it.
Weeks counts every week the song has spent on this chart up to and including this issue,
and Peak is its best position over those same weeks — so a record still climbing shows
its current position, and one past its high shows the high rather than where it sits now.
A green circle on TW means the record was
bulleted — in this era that marks an increase in airplay, not an upward move, so a
bulleted record can hold or even slip a position. In 1979 it meant something else again: the
page's own legend reserved the circle for “significant upward movement from at least 60%
of our reporters”, which measures how widely a record gained rather than whether it
gained, so plenty of 1979 records rise without one — and the Adult panel was markedly
harder to please than the CHR panel. The bullet is read off the page in every year, never
inferred from the movement.
Debut and re-entry are judged against what is loaded, so a record already climbing when the
archive begins reads as a debut in that first archived week.
Every name in the artist column is a link to everything that act charted, on every
chart and in every year the archive holds. A billing that credits more than one act links each of them
separately, so a duet turns up on both pages.